Emancipation review: Will Smith's grueling slave drama is as shallow as a Louisiana bayou
, what happens before and after the taking of this influential photo is justifiably invented but unjustifiably fraudulent, a pedestal upon which Smith can foreground his virtuousness and Fuqua can flex his muscular style.
Whenshifts into chase mode, with Peter and the others followed by a posse led by a stock villain named Fassel , Fuqua is more at home. But that’s hardly a compliment because the more arduous Peter’s slog through the bayou and the more suspenseful his near-miss encounters, the more the film plays like a slick genre exercise. In this gravest of contexts, Fuqua’s natural proclivity for blunt force violence reduces some of his depictions of slave life to being too visually performative.
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